Get Out: a $4.5M budget horror movie by Director Jordan Peele and Cinematographer Toby Oliver (ACS) (released in Spring 2017) finished on the top 15th 2017 grossing movies in the US with more than $175M gross revenue. Get Out is now in the race for Best Picture Academy Award 2018.

Cinematographer Toby Oliver (ACS) shot it entirely with zooms, a first time for him on a feature film. Jordan Peele felt also more comfortable with them. Toby says he chose the Angenieux Optimo zooms (15-40, 28-76, 45-120 & 24-290) for the total flexibility they gave him and particularly liked their “very cinematic look with a certain amount of warmth and character”.

After Get Out, Toby Oliver also shot Happy Death Day by Christopher Landon (released in fall 2017) another horror thriller story, again with Optimo zooms. He says that since Get Out he has started using the zooms a lot more as main lenses.

“I used the same package of compact Angenieux zooms (15-40mm, 28-76mm, 45-120mm) on both movies, but on GET OUT we also had the 12x Optimo on Get Out.

I used all three of them most of the time, because they were spread over the 2 cameras; One camera (on steadicam) usually had the 15-40mm and the other camera had either the 28-76 or the 45-120. The 15-40mm was mostly on the steadicam – the hand held camera was more often a tighter shot. I lit the night scenes up to a 2.8 – it’s not really a problem when you can light the scene and shoot at 1000 or 1280 ISO on the Alexa.If using only available light (like say, only streetlights at night) them maybe I would need faster lenses. I didn’t really have that situation much.

We did have limited time, so using zooms does definitely save a few minutes a day; but it was also a directorial choice to prefer zooms over prime lenses. On Get Out I was so happy with using the Optimos that I wanted to do it again. I used them for Happy Death Day by Christopher Landon!” DP Toby Oliver